205 comments on US F1 set to abandon F1 bid

I feel more positive for Campos, they are supposedly more technically advanced compared to USF1 and it is better to be technically advanced and lacking funds than having potential investors but no chance of a decent car. Campos have already had rumours of a deal.which suggests there could be a plan to save them in some form.
If this is all over foe USF1 then I doubt F1 can really try to crack America for a few years. All the steps were in place; a national team and the return of Montreal could have ignited interest for F1 to return there and race.

Utterly, sadly, depressingly predictable. If this is true (and we still don’t really know, Adam Cooper’s article notwithstanding)(although, there is a story on Speed, a formerly ‘friendly’ news source for Windsor) then much of what I’ve tiringly repeated here is true: reputations of young F1 up-and-comers have been smashed and once again, F1 in the US looks ridiculous.

Windsor and Anderson are rowing back saying they weren’t ‘re-inventing the wheel’ but this was cornerstone of their pitch with their skunkworks nonsense.

The silence from the team speaks volumes because until January there was a stream of rubbish issuing forth from them about how well things were going. Joe Saward, who was carrying the flag has fallen strangely silent (the mainstream F1 press have been giving USF1 a *very* easy ride with either support or silence) and said a USF1 announcement would be forthcoming on his blog and Twitter stream and it never came. Tweets asking for comment were not returned or even commented on.

It’s deeply troubling that they couldn’t make this happen or even pay their staff (!). Brian Bonner, a staunch Twitter defender has gone from the team (but continues to ‘help his friends at USF1′), rumours are swirling about (which is always a bad sign, especially when the team doesn’t outright quash them) and there’s also talk that Chad Hurley has gone.

Hurley’s involvement always seemed ropey and it has to be remembered, he’s a user interface designer, not necessarily the smartest money guy in the room. Just because you have lots of money doesn’t you mean you spend it in the most sensible places. So I never thought his involvement was of much use to the team and he is probably one of the sponsors that Windsor darkly referred to as not being very helpful in Adam Cooper’s blog post.

So, I say a sad, pre-emptive farewell to USF1, although it does mean you all won’t club together and pay for a ticket to watch me run Silverstone nude (I made that promise in a post somewhere). Windsor was the wrong man for the job, using the US brand as an opportunistic and exploitative play to curry favour from across the pond. Windsor is a fast-talking Australian (like myself) who was more interested in his very 70’s dream of ‘going racing.’ He wanted to start in the big league and has found himself being spat out by it.

The chances of them finding a cash injection at this point are almost zero. They would be looking to trade their place in the Concorde agreement with another party for a car/support.

they shouldn’t be allowed to sell their spot, it should fall back to a party that applied for a place and denied entry (ie. Stefan).

Again this calls into question the FIA selection process, 2 out of the 3 teams (Campos and USF1) have struggled, while 2 teams not selected (Stefan and Lotus) seem to be doing reasonably well. USF1 blew a huge chance when they didn’t snap up the Toyoto chassis and plans – might have been a poor decision fueled by pure arrogance.

This speaks volumes about the judgement of the FIA who gave these a place ahead of quality outfits like Prodrive and Lola who would have been genuinely good teams for the forthcoming F1 season. Looks like they placed taking the standardise Cosworth engines ahead of being a serious team.

I feel sorry for the Argentinian lad who had been told he had a seat for the season, just to have it taken away from him.

This speaks volumes about the judgement of the FIA who gave these a place ahead of quality outfits like Prodrive and Lola who would have been genuinely good teams for the forthcoming F1 season. Looks like they placed taking the standardise Cosworth engines ahead of being a serious team.

I’m sorry, but your anti-FIA agenda speaks volumes. The failues of USF1 and Campos are a result of internal mismanagement and an inability to capitalise on demand for Spanish and American teams. There was simply no interest for sponsorship in either country, a mistake even Alain Prost made back in 2001. It was impossible to predict this outcme back in March.

Also, Prodrive were once given a grid entry and failed to materialise, just as USF1 are now apparently doing. How are they any different from USF1?

It was entirely possible to see that failing to get sponsorship for two new back-of-the-grid teams in the middle of a massive recession from two markets where potentially interested sponsors were already fully committed to motorsport ventures (Indy and NASCAR in the states, Alonso, Barrichello and Massa in Iberian markets), when established sponsors of successful teams were bailing out would be a problem. The names announced by the FIA were met with incredulity at the time from all sorts of quarters, and with good reason. Like Nick Fry, the FIA failed to do proper diligence on the teams they were accepting – or more likely, chose teams that would toe the party line rather than teams they thought would turn up. USF1 were full of hot air from before they applied, and Campos’s whole scheme was based on the sort of wishful thinking Donington would have been proud of.

The farce and the speculation is entirely the fault of the FIA for not acting in the best interests of the sport in the first place.

Prodrive did not “fail to materialise” – the FIA (at the behest of teams who didn’t want McLaren selling customer cars?) changed the rules that Prodrive applied under, right before they entered, and Prodrive very sensibly decided not to spend years being ****** around by Max. Strange that Scuderia Torro Rosso didn’t have any such problems getting hold of a customer car……

I don’t know why you are bolding the word “Scuderia”, since Toro Rosso use Red Bull chassis. You were referring to chassis, not engines throughout the Prodrive paragraph. Other than that I agree with you.

Doesn’t the word Scuderia mean “stable”, or “team” in Italian. I’m pretty sure Scuderia Toro Rosso is just an Italian translation of “Team Red Bull”. I’m also pretty sure that they have developed their own chassis this year, separate from Red Bull Racing. As far as I am aware the only link to Scuderia Ferrari is the fact the Scuderia Toro Rosso uses Ferrari engines.

the FIA failed to do proper diligence on the teams they were accepting

Again: it would have been impossible to predict USF1 and Campos’ inability to find sponsorship a year ago. Due diligence doesn’t come into it.

Prodrive did not “fail to materialise” – the FIA (at the behest of teams who didn’t want McLaren selling customer cars?) changed the rules that Prodrive applied under, right before they entered

Having a grid entry and not appearing on the grid is the definition of “failing to materialise”. Prodrive did not apply under customer chassis rules – they lodged their entry with the proviso that they could use one. Dave Richards had to know that the use of a customer chassis had to be ratified by the teams first, and if there was a chance that the teams didn’t agree to it, he needed a backup plan. But he never formulatd one. He put all his eggs in the one basket, and it blew up in his face.

1: Everyone predicted that sponsorship would be impossible to find. That was the whole thrust of max’s budget cap, remember? You must run teams for under $40m because these budgets aren’t workable any more? Sponsors were deserting teams (even McLaren lost sponsors). RBS, ING, HP, Lenovo, these are all big ticket marketing companies, and they were all leaving. The FIA was supposed to have audited these teams to check they had funding in place, viable business plans, suitable facilites, and expert personnel. 3 teams who met all those criteria (Lola, Epsilon and Prodrive) were turned down. Two teams with no facilities, no business plan, little or no hope of sponsorship, and no expert staff on board were given the slots instead. And the inevitable two failures have happened. Bernie knew it was going to happen, he said so before the end of the season!

2: Your use of the phrase “fail to materialise” attempts to compare Prodrive’s situation with USF1’s. I think i’ve been pretty clear with the facts already, they are not at all similar. Prodrive are a professional outfit and, when the FIA flim-flammed on the terms they were told they could enter under, their boss saw that it was not an honest offer, so he withdrew rather than wasting his team’s time, money and talent playing games with Max. They were open, up front, and professional about it. It is also worth noting that while teams who wanted to run a McLaren customer chassis were told no, another team who had a ferrari engine contract had no problems obtaining a customer chassis. That’s an example of FIA “one rule for this team, another rule for the rest”.

USF1, on the other hand, were full of hot air and nonsense, attempting to run an F1 team on a “dream” and a lot of hype instead of hard business and engineering realities. It was clear from the outset that they were, at best, going to have trouble doing this, even if they did it to the best standard. Instead, they bodged it, and took a lot of credibility out of the sport too. That’s entirely the fault of the people who reviewed their entry and approved it, despite them being less qualified to get on the grid than other teams.

I think you’re response here demonstrates very clearly how Prodrive’s situation and USF1’s were completely different. As you stated, Prodrive lodged their entry conditional upon using a customer chassis. I agree with you that Dave Richards had to know it would need to be ratified first, which is why he lodged a conditional entry. He did not need a backup plan, he had one. In the event it wasn’t ratified Prodrive would not race. That is a backup plan and was fully disclosed at the time of application. It is the FIA, not Prodrive, which failed to have a backup plan, resulting in no one racing in that slot. When you receive and approve a conditional entry the burden is on the entity that approved the conditional entry to have a backup plan in the event that those conditions can not be met. One could argue that the FIA should not have approved a conditional entry (and likely should never approve any conditional entry) or one could argue that the FIA should have had a backup plan when approving a conditional entry to cover the possibility that the conditions not be met and the entry retracted. The FIA knew (or should have known) that Prodrive would not race if the customer chassis option was not ratified by the teams, as it was fully disclosed to the FIA as a condition of the application. Its not fair for the FIA to approve an application under those conditions and then hold a grudge against that team for following through exactly with what was laid out in their conditional application.

USF1 did not lodge a conditional entry stating that their entry application was subject to obtaining sponsors. This means there is a breach of contract in the USF1 situation, as they clearly failed to satisfy their end of the deal, while there is no breach in the Prodrive contract as their contract was conditional from the start.

May not have been clear enough. Prodrive’s chances went up in smoke when the FIA flip-flopped on customer cars. If they were allowed, they’d have easily been on the grid. If Prodrive had known about it BEFORE getting the slot, they would’ve had time for plan for it. Neither of those happened. Prodrive didn’t get a fair shake.

It does speak volumes of the FIA or rather at the man at the helm of affairs at that time, a certain Max Mosley.

The slots were awarded more on sentimens than competence. If USF1 even had 15% of the required amount to compete available to them, they would not be in this mess.

By threatening to force out the established teams from F1 and replacing them with new ones, the FIA was putting its credibility at stake and it was really in their interests to ensure that only those genuinely viable teams were given the available slots.

Its a distraction trying to compare this scenario with that of Prodrive’s situation 2years back. For one reason, the FIA promised Prodrive customer cars. Prodrive came up with a business plan based on customer cars being available. At the very last minute they FIA banned the use of customer cars. Mike Gascoyne wasn’t available at that time to help them come up with their own chassis in record time. In my own opinion, Prodrive was a victim of FIA fraud.

“The failues of USF1 and Campos are a result of internal mismanagement and an inability to capitalise on demand for Spanish and American teams.” – correct

“It was impossible to predict this outcme back in March.” – no it wasn’t, it was patently obvious.

“Also, Prodrive were once given a grid entry and failed to materialise, just as USF1 are now apparently doing.” – nonsense, see all the points made by others.

The FIA (i.e. Max) wanted new kids on the block that he hoped could be kept under his thumb, rather than teams likely to have real weight. He wanted (car) manufacturer influence reduced – hence the insistence on Cosworth engines, and he certainly didn’t want someone like Dave Richards, that would stand alongside the big teams and fight back next time he threw his weight around.

No, those are not the facts. Prodrive applied to enter the sport under certain conditions. Those conditions were changed. Dave Richards, a man with F1 experience, could tell that the invitation was not being given on a fair basis and decided not to waste his time or money.

USF1 entered under certain conditions. The conditions were changed. Instead of realising “Whoops we haven’t a hope in hell of pulling this off now” they soldiered blindly on and made a laughing stock of themselves.

There are now rumors that Stefan GP has not fully paid off Toyota. Add the fact that even if somebody acquires the Dallara it has to be built and shaken down in 3 weeks.

At this point, I think we’re gonna have 22 Cars come Bahrain, plus who knows how long Virgin and Lotus will last.

I foresee Todt trying to convince Lola and Prodrive to bid for 2011 or 2012.

Either way I feel bad for the Argentine people, whose tax dollars will be wasted. As well as American F1 fans, following Indygate, the loss of the USGP and now the failure of an “American” team. F1 in the US now rests on the shoulders of Alexander Rossi becoming the American “Lewis Hamilton”.

That is why I disagreed with USF1 carrying the name of an entire country in their team title – it means that the entire US market for F1 was tied to the fate of this team through that association.

All the remarks about USF1 failing immediately also mention the fate of F1 in North America overall. Windsor overplayed the role that the USA played in USF1, and the association along with what appears to be the impending failure of USF1 does not bode well for F1 in the USA (wow, what a confusing mix of words).

If it was ‘Windsor F1′ failing, there would be almost no talk about the failure of F1 in the USA.

Indy 2005 was in no way America’s fault. It was a fault with the Michelin tyres and the high speed banked corner, and there was solution, installing a temporary chicane, but the FIA / Ferrari said no. Of course Ferrari didn’t need the chicane because they were on Bridgestones instead. So the blame for Indy 2005 should probably rest halfway between Michelin for not having a suitable tyre and FIA / Ferrari for vetoing a temporary solution that would have allowed the full field to at least put on a show.

I’m saying that FIA / Ferarri should be blamed for failing to comprise. What they effectively did was destroy F1 in the US. They saw the short term gain of an easy race win, and took that over the potential long term gain of F1 having a strong presence in the US. They failed to act in the best interest of the sport, which is to have a full grid at each race. If I’m not mistaken, part of the deal with the chicane was that points would be awarded only to the teams that were running Bridgestone tyres. It would have been a fair compromise that would have at least allowed American fans to see as close to a real F1 races as possible given the circumstances, rather than the 6 car parade they were treated to.

The organisation who “destroy F1 in the US” was clearly Michelin. It was they who failed to produce a safe tyre for the race, and caused the whole debacle, so you simply cannot go about blaming anyone else.

Wish I’d seen this post sooner. Sir Frank Williams confirmed on BBC Radio 5 Live the following day that the chicane would have made no difference to the durability of the Michelin tyres. And to correct another misconception, Ferrari had asked for the rule regarding tyres to be reviewed when Michael Schumacher had a delamination at the Spanish GP earlier that season. All the Michelin shod teams said NO! The rules are the rules, they said. And along came Indy and bit them in the ****. Not Ferrari’s problem by any manner of means.

Sad if true, but the naysayers will have only been proven right by things being settled this way rather than the other. That’s not me trying to say my own position was still validated even in light of this news, just that there was a negativity surrounding USF1 for a long while, and if they had turned up in Bahrain that would have been proven wrong instead of right.

I had hope for them and America’s involvement in F1 in general, but both seemed to have been dashed, completely and temporarily for the two respectively.

To be honest, an american team failing in F1 will do 0 to get the american general public interested in the sport. even if a race was to return to the states….what’s one race per year supposed to do to excite them when there are nascar and indy races a couple times a month that many americans adore? F1 in the states will be like football (soccer) in the states. some will love it and many more can get caught up in the hype, but it will never rival american sports such as NFL and MLB, just like F1 will never rival nascar and possibly indy (also they will find a way to get the name wrong lol)

So what? I have always maintained that F1 will never be as popular as the domestic sports series over here, but that dosen’t mean that the sport cannot have a successful and profitable presence here. Just look at all the European soocer/football teams playing games and selling merchandise over here- they know they can’t rival the NFL in pure numbers, but they are building a great fan base and making money at the same time.

Also, how about actually starting the correct way, and giving an American race first, before letting in a team and expecting Americans to jump at supporting them? If Greece had an F1 team, it would work, because it’s a small country. If Britain announced it was entering a team into the World Tiddlywinks League (I know Britain already plays tiddlywinks, this is just an example), it wouldn’t raise interest in the sport overnight.

Perhaps when we have a regular F1 race in America, the majority of it run on an oval, and perhaps a small winter series in the South for promotional purposes, perhaps then we can get a lot more Americans interested in F1.

I think the FIA limits the number of entries allowed in the Formula 1 World Championship. I don’t know why.

In the FIA International Sporting Code, Appendix O, Supplement 2 there is an equation that calculates the maximum number of cars allowed to start a race based on the dimensions of a track. The minimum length of allowed for circuit that can be used for Formula 1 is 3.5km, and the minimum width for new circuits is 12 metres, so using these two values along with a couple of other parameters specified in the International Sporting Code, the maximum number of Formula 1 cars allowed to start a race on a 3.5km circuit is 33 cars. On longer circuits that number would increase. So I guess theoretically the FIA could allow upto 33 cars, if they wanted.

It’s for safety purposes. Some circuits can only hold a certain number of cars. While places like Shanghai and Abu Dhabi could easily hold thirty cars without breaking a sweat, the size of the grid is effectively limited to the number of cars the smallest venue can hold. That venue is Monaco. Space is at a premium on the streets of the principality, and the pits can only hold twenty-six or twenty-eight casr. I know parc ferme can only hold twenty-six (when the FIA was trying to pitch Sauber as a fourteenth team, they suggested installing video cameras in the pit garages and using them as parc ferme). Anything more would simply be unsafe.

I think that the rumours are true. Chad Hurley must have left the picture a long time ago – look at thier website. It says that CH will take “an active role in sponsorship procurement and activation, external communications activities and enhancing exposure for US F1 Team through a variety of media-focused initiatives and campaigns.”
I wonder how he is going with this? As a You-Tube Founder – the USF1 website has not been updated since late January – hardly the way to communicate activities and enhance exposure. If he was really into USF1 – we would be seeing daily updates – more media exposure. The official F1 website has barely mentioned the fact that USF1 even exist in the past weeks.
I think that SGP has been a revelation in the sport in the last few weeks – sending his container to Bahrain – and just the comments Bernie has said have ‘spiced things up a bit’ F1 in past years has not had this sort of ‘good’ drama which it needs from time to time to raise its profile. It has had plenty of negative drama (McLaren/Renault) but this has just added something at a normally more boring time of year.

Until it is official, I wouldn’t overreact from a report from argentina. Why would they be talking to the media when they are against a deadline? And why wouldn’t a paper in the US report this? The Charlotte Observer is a much more credable paper.

You know, I’m not exactly heartbroken at the idea that USF1 might not make it. I would have liked to see them show up, if only to stick it to the nay-sayers who I feel attacked the team rather unjustly from the moment it was proposed.

If this happens – I’m refusing to speak in absolutes because there’s always a chance that something may come of it – then I’m laying first claim to a guest article on what happened to the team and why.

“I would have liked to see them show up, if only to stick it to the nay-sayers who I feel attacked the team rather unjustly from the moment it was proposed.”

It’s a fair enough comment…but if, as looks likely, they don’t turn up at all (or maybe at best doing an Aguri and stealing an old chassis to limp around in) then the nay-sayers hardly unjustly attacked them – they were essentially able to read through the lines and see that it wasn’t going to happen.

I’ll be disappointed if they don’t turn up, although as much in a “I want 13 teams” way than “I want USF1″. But throughout the process they’ve never established any credibility as a proper Formula 1 “entity”.

To be fair, Campos haven’t either, and if it wasn’t for Dallara I’d have written them off in the same way before now.

the nay-sayers hardly unjustly attacked them – they were essentially able to read through the lines and see that it wasn’t going to happen

No, they weren’t. They had no evidience of anything other than their dislike of Americans in general and Peter Windsor in particular. They were all making stupid claims like the machines in the SPEED-TV videos being props, the employees were all actors and the on-screen dsplays of car designs were all pre-rendered animations run especially for the cameras.

Whilst I don’t agree with your earlier point about the FIA (who I feel share a good deal – though not the majority – of the blame), I agree with you that the naysayers just happened to be “proven” right. The worst thing is this “proof” will provide ammunition for just about anything to do with F1 and the USA – every time it will be: “Yeh, remember USF1?” and whatever the proposal, it will be put down just as USF1 was.

Your assumption that people sceptical of this team are automatically being anti-american is misplaced, erroneous, and reflects badly on you.

All the evidence that this team was going to have problems was evident from day 1. As the months went by, it only got worse. When they started releasing videos of empty rooms, then it got laughable. Campos at least had the sense to keep quiet when things were going badly, as opposed to getting louder.

In fact the only person I saw engaged in jingoistic nationalistic invective was Peter Windsor and his “europeans are lazy” rant on the offical USF1 blog.